Ground Zero mosque fear, anger stuns families of 9/11 victims

Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThe building which is poised to house the Cordoba Initiative Mosque and Cultural Center on August 16, 2010 in New York, New York.

Fear is winning in Lower Manhattan. For Now.

"When I first heard about the mosque near Ground Zero, I thought to myself, ‘So what? They lost people on 9/11, too, they should have a place to pray,’” explains Carolee Azzarello of Green Brook.

Her two brothers were killed Sept. 11, 2001.

“But all this hype, all this talk, it’s got me angry and confused, now I’m thinking maybe they shouldn’t build it — it’s a slap to those of us who lost people there.”

Still, before she makes up her mind, Azzarello wants to find out more about the controversy. Just what is planned, and who is planning it, and why so many people –“here in a country where we have freedom of religion” – are opposed to it.

“What is happening to this country," asks Robert McIlvaine, whose son and namesake was killed that day. “It is so sad that people would use a simple issue of religious tolerance to spew hate and anger and create fear.”

McIlvaine, from Oreland, Pa., was a fixture at hearings of the 9/11 Commission in Washington. The man with the orange baseball cap, a Princeton hat, because the retired teacher’s son was a recent Princeton graduate when he was killed.

“People who have absolutely no connection to 9/11 are using it for their own political agendas,” he says. “Fear and hatred help those agendas.”

Lorie Van Auken of East Brunswick, widowed by the attacks on the World Trade Center, says she feels chilled by efforts to prevent a Sufi Muslim community to expand their facilities in an old warehouse two blocks from Ground Zero.

Mia Song/The Star-LedgerCarolee Azzarello, who lost two brothers, Tim and John during 9/11, is seen here in this 2006 photo.

“It’s only because of religious tolerance in this country that my family is here," says Van Auken, one of the so-called “Jersey Widows” who led the fight to create the 9/11 Commission. “They escaped intolerance in Europe — now we see it here.”

Fear is winning because the debate is lopsided — a vocal group, waving the bloody shirt of 9/11 and opposed to the plans to build Cordoba House, versus those who cherish freedom of religion but have no desire to campaign for the building of a Muslim facility.

“I am frightened by what the leaders of the opposition are doing and saying," says Diane Horning of Scotch Plains. Her son Matthew was killed that day.

“I agree it’s insensitive of Muslims to want to build close to Ground Zero, but I grew up in a country where differences are tolerated. I’m not rallying for either side.”

For many relatives of 9/11 victims, the construction of a 13-story community center on the site of an old coat warehouse is not an important concern. Horning, for example, leads the effort to bring the ashen remains of victims, now buried in a Staten Island landfill, to a more appropriate memorial site.

She says she thinks it’s “hypocritical” of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to champion the religious and cultural rights of one group — Sufi Muslims — “while not respecting our rights to bury our died in a proper manner.”

Mindy Kleinberg, of East Brunswick, another “Jersey widow,” says she was stunned by the force of the anti-Muslim rhetoric, but says she has other fights.

“We still don’t have all the truth of what happened that day," she says. “We still have Guantanamo. This should not be the most important issue.”

So, except for Bloomberg, there won’t be much of “pro” side in the debate against fear.

President Obama managed only to trip over what had been a forceful statement in defense of Constitutional rights and hurt himself politically with both sides.

It’s not likely there will be much discussion, not just about the critical value of the First Amendment to American freedom, but also of the nature of Sufi Islam. Not much talk about the presence near Ground Zero of two mosques that predated 9/11 and continue now – or the prayer space open to Muslims at the Pentagon, a target on 9/11.

There will be talk about how the imam has made remarks critical of Israeli policy — as if many people in Israel aren’t also critics of their government’s policy.

There will be talk how Cordoba House will house anti-American plotting, as if it won’t be under close scrutiny of intelligence services at nearby federal buildings.

There will be the unfairest sort of guilt by association, a bit like blaming child abuse committed by Roman Catholic priests on all Catholics.